Right Thinking from the Left Coast

When Is A Cut Not A Cut?

When it’s a program we like. A couple of Republicans have proposed a change to the budget — eliminating the sequester on the military in exchange for chained CPI for Social Security. It’s not going anywhere, but it does serve to highlight the cognitive dissonance that defines the Left:

Reps. Jim Bridenstine (R-Okla.) and Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) are introducing the Provide for the Common Defense Act on Tuesday. The legislation would cancel out the next two years of sequestration cuts for the Pentagon by putting a heavier burden on senior citizens and federal workers.

Even without the sequestration, military spend will go down under the BCA. But notice that HuffPo gets its math right here: these are actual cuts in defense spending and the Republican are, well, making the cuts smaller — in real dollars. Sequestration is real cutting. In my own work, I’ve seen NASA closing down programs or canceling new ones in response to it.

Now let’s go a paragraph earlier:

A pair of House Republicans have a new bill that would spare the military from sequestration by cutting the Social Security benefits of many Americans who already experience painful federal budget cuts.

Emphasis mine.

These are not cuts. They are changes in the rate of growth of Social Security benefits. Many economists believe these changes reflect actual spending patterns. You can disagree with you want* but you can’t change the language life that.

(*Many fools on the Left want Social Security massively expanded despite its current and swelling fiscal shortfalls. Krugman says that Social Security is the only part of the retirement system that’s working well. All Ponzi schemes work well … until they collapse. My 403b would be working great too if my bank could stock up an imaginary portfolio against expected future investments.)

If the Republican proposal were to increase military spending very slightly, HuffPo wouldn’t call those cuts. But slow the rate of growth of their pet program and it’s “cuts!”.